


Gymnophoria

by redemptivs (orderandsophism)



Series: Max and Furiosa Are Bad at Everything [4]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Naked Cuddling, Post-Canon, wtf do i tag this i dunno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6454156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orderandsophism/pseuds/redemptivs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt:<br/>Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you </p><p>Max creepin'. Furiosa peepin'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gymnophoria

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghostsjogging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostsjogging/gifts).



It is an inevitability that Max moves himself into Furiosa’s bed. He asks no permission, and she makes no protest. The girls pull knowing faces, brows raised in aporetic concern, but it’s tacit knowledge that he belongs by her side.

The first night, Furiosa slips her mechanical arm off and hangs it up by her bedside. It’s all she removes in preparation for bed. He is similarly attired, in his shirt and pants covered in a fine, friable coating of sand and dust. Only their feet are bare. Smirking, he touches his toes to hers, and she flinches only because she expects warmth where there are five phalanges like icicles at the bridge of her foot. But he makes a habit of tucking his feet behind him, to keep them away from her when they sleep. 

The next night she at least removes her cincher. He removes nothing else. 

Sometimes he curls into her at night, his forehead planted against her shoulder, and she lets him stay there, no matter how uncomfortable his sweat-slicked brow becomes, no matter how hot and clammy and unpleasant, because it’s more pleasant to have him there than not. 

Sometimes he curls away from her, so tightly into himself that his back looks like a great boulder. Sometimes she wants to wind an arm around his waist and pull him to her chest and feel his heart beat against her. Sometimes she does. Sometimes, when she’s sure he’s sleeping, she runs her hand down the vale of his spine and presses her fingertips into the constellation of scars obscured by his shirt. Sometimes he scoots back and jams his ass into her hip, and she laughs and curls around him like a proprietary animal, her cheek pressed to the nape of his neck, her breath warming his skin. 

Sometimes he waits for her when she’s late: sitting up in bed, attentive as she climbs the stairs to the little alcove where their bed lies. She smiles and divests herself of her hardware and crawls into bed, slipping beneath the covers with him. It’s a perfectly virtuous arrangement, curious in its simplicity. Sometimes she finds herself wondering if there isn’t something more to all of it. 

And sometimes it feels like there is more. The girls talk and tease and cajole about the way he stares up at her, as though she’s hung the moon and the stars. But they don’t see the way he looks at her sometimes, with something she assumes is scrutiny, only far, far sweeter, somehow. 

She gets an intimation of what it might mean one day when she comes to the room to rinse off after a particularly exhausting day. She’s grimy, smudged and spattered in oil and sand in terrifying combination, which insinuates itself into every crevice of her body, it seems. Inside the vault, she unbuckles her arm and lets it fall to the ground, tugs her shirt off and tosses it in the little pool. She bends down to dunk it in, scrub it between her knuckles, wipe off as much as she can of the unctuous gravel, and she’s so invested in the effort that she doesn’t hear the footfalls of boots behind her. 

She gives a little cry when he murmurs her name, whirls around and jumps up, and for a split second, she’s bare from the waist up. She gasps, covers herself with her arms and he’s shielding his own gaze with both hands outstretched in both defense and supplication. There’s an awkward moment where they both freeze in place, make no motion to move, and the moment is as tense as a bow, until they both bolt from the room at full tilt. 

But when night falls, they’re both padding uncertainly onto the bed. She’s sitting on the edge, removing her boots when she turns to look at him, and finds him staring unabashedly at her, with that look, like he’s appraising her. Like she’s something precious and rare, something that deserves such circumspect perusal. And she knows then by the glimmer in his dark of his blue eyes that he’s imagining her in that moment, and imagining more. 

Furiosa finds herself in a curious predicament, a certain problem with eyes: The way he looks up at her when she crawls into bed, how his gaze falls to note the declination of her bowed head, how he stares wondrously at her skin in a way that makes her feel exquisitely naked, or wish very much that she was so. Or the the way she returns his gaze and can’t avert her own eyes, stares at him with a meeting esurience that is just as bold as his.

And then there’s a problem with hands. She’s suddenly acutely aware of his touch where once it was of little matter or consequence: when he brushes his knuckles against hers, when he begins draping his arm across her shoulders when they sleep, and finally when he approaches her in the dark of their loft, his head crowned in a halo of sidereal light, and his fingers reach out touch reverently at her cheek, following the line of her jaw, down the column of her throat, ghosts across her sternum and slips beneath the fabric of her shirt. And it’s not his warmth that prickles her skin, it’s the unexpected tenderness he manages to commit in spite of the cracks and callouses in the pads of his fingers.

His hand slips beneath the neckline, presses flat against her chest. It lays against her heart, and she’s sure he can feel the arrythmatic hammering there, like it’s trying to burst out her ribs, and somehow his touch quickens her heartbeat and calms her inquietude at once. It’s a moment of delicious, if confusing, repletion, until he smiles. 

And then there’s a problem with lips. Like when he leans in to brush his against hers, and she flinches only because she doesn’t understand the meaning of a kiss. He draws back just enough to ask again with his eyes, and Furiosa’s concession is a laugh like a prelude, as inviting as the soft verdure of her eyes. His answering resolution is to move in again until their lips close in the cadence of a kiss. 

He’s pushing the sleeve from her shoulder, but that’s not how it goes. Her shirt’s caught on her neck and she grimaces, putting up a hand to signal, ‘wait.’ She unlaces her cincher and lifts her shirt halfway before she notices the same look in his eyes that she could never before discern, only now it’s accompanied by a small half smile that makes her feel impossibly adored. 

She pulls the shirt over her head and his eyes are as large as saucers when she picks up his hand and replaces it over her heart, where it last was. He holds it there as his eyes frantically pore over her nakedness as though he’s preparing for it to disappear forever. And then her draws her in, his hand smoothing up her chest now, fingertips pressing at the nape of her neck needfully. His kisses are rough, frantic, the stubble of his beard scratching hard at her dry lips, and Furiosa’s shaking, unaware of how to survive this welcome but foreign assault. His finger hooks uselessly into the loops of her belt and tugs, and her hand moves shakily to remove her belt. But her hand is clumsy, her efforts futile, so she grabs his hands and sets them to work. He unbuckles her belt with far more success, and pushes her pants from her hips gingerly. They’re loose enough that they fall away, and she steps out of them easily and they’re kicked to the side. 

Max’s hands are at her waist, slipping down to grip her hips, and he’s looking at her with a hard-knit brow. His breathing quickens, a little labored, and she’s worried something’s wrong, but he falls to his knees before her, abutting his forehead into the softness of her belly. He sighs, nails digging needfully into her hips, his breath a caress just below her navel. 

Furiosa is naked and bare, but she feels as venerated as a goddess before him, and just as puissant. She bends and tugs at the hem of his shirt, and he’s looking up at her confused as a puppy, but he’s obeying. His shirt is discarded, his pants, his boots, too. She holds out her hand and he takes it, pulling himself up to standing and tugging her into an embrace fraught with an anxious desolation. His body is unexpectedly soft, where it’s not covered by fine, diffused hair. He smells of sweat and sand, of something known, of saudade, of totality and completion. 

He lifts her up easily, though she’s tall enough that her dangling toes are only an inch or so off the ground, but her arms are around his neck, holding tight, and she feels him lurch forward, staggering with surprising smoothness in spite of her weight.

She hears the susurration of water before she feels her legs slowly submerged in the warmth of the little pool. She curls against him and he folds her into his lap, and their skin warms the other, prickles as the cool water laps at their shoulders. They sit alone and unmoving, with only the sound of water echoing against the rock to accompany them, and Furiosa isn’t sure if there is anything more perfect and paradisiac than this repose in all the world with this silent man and his unexpectant embrace.


End file.
